Visiting Professor of Philosophy
On Faculty since 2013

Education

Ph.D., Philosophy, Indiana University, 1972

B.A., Philosophy, Wheaton College, 1964

About Cliff Williams

I entered college thinking I would be a mathematics major, but after I took a philosophy course second semester of my freshman year I dropped that and took up philosophy. In graduate school my Ph.D. dissertation was a pretty piece of analytic metaphysics on the philosophy of time. Twenty years later I had a conversion of sorts—I decided to pursue subjects in philosophy that were more connected to human experience, such as love and friendship, virtues, and emotions, but without giving up analytic metaphysics.

The two things I most like about the teaching life are solitude and interaction with students.

In solitude I like to gaze out windows, rummage around in libraries, read, craft words and paragraphs that make their way into articles and books, and formulate new questions to ask students. I also like to be part of students’ lives as they are making something of themselves; I like to listen to them tell me about themselves and stay in touch with them after they graduate.

When I am not doing academic things, I dream of hiking in the Colorado mountains, which I do every July.